Salutations! I come before you today to talk a bit of random nonsense, and possibly drop some info as well about the weapons and armor within the upcoming excellent game Neverwinter Nights 2. Having used our toolset to put together the majority of our weapons and armors, I feel I can say with a high degree of confidence that things are super-awesome. Which is to say: Obsidian has crafted a system wherein one can quickly learn how to make a really impressive weapon or armor in a very short amount of time – an item that looks as plain or as fancypants as you want.

To give you a sense of what I mean, allow me to set up a brief scenario for you: that of Frederico and Gretchen, twin children of the illustrious McProtagonist clan, as they set out to slay whatever mighty evil happens to be in the area this week. It is fortunate for them that they come from a prestigious line of adventurers, and have excellent equipment passed down to them: we just have to craft it first.

First up: weapons. Patient Frederico is a ranger, and is a longbow-usin’ kind of guy. With complete weapons like bows – where bits and pieces can’t really be swapped out – there are usually multiple models to swap between, and basically EVERY weapon model in the game is tintable. This means that for longbows, I have no less than five models to choose from, and three tints to play around with on top of this, allowing you to set the appearance of your bow in just a handful of clicks.

For valiant Gretchen the fighter, her greatsword works a little differently. Certainly there are multiple models to choose from: but multi-part weapons such as swords and axes can actually have multiple models in one weapon, allowing the user to put together different heads/hafts/grips for their hackin’ instrument of choice. Gretchen’s greatsword started out all using the same model set, then the blade and pommel models were swapped to create a new look for the weapon. Tints were set after this, and in just a few moments one has a sword fit for hacking all kinds of various and sundry critters, and looking crazy impressive whilst doing so.